Stop calling them ‘tech companies’

[Note: This is another installment of my quixotic quest to take Bravo’s new reality show, StartUps: Silicon Valley, and extract some meaningful discourse on startups — not the idiotic drama. And yes, we know the show is vapid and ridiculous. No need to reiterate in the comments.]

“People in tech here are excited to build cool products, and disrupt industries.”

— Kim Taylor, after quitting her job and getting ready to start her own business that will “demystify dress codes for high-end events.”

The doesn’t-actually-mean-anything marketing-speak aside, Kim inadvertently points out one of the biggest misnomers in Silicon Valley:

That there is really such thing as a “tech company.”

Compare Facebook and McDonald’s. You would never call the latter a “tech company.” But the Golden Arches spends huge sums of money each year to optimize systems that control ordering or the burger assembly line. McDonald’s applies the results of studies and statistics to improve every single action taken behind the counter when you place your order.

Facebook does the same thing. They add up the interactions, “likes,” photo uploads, check-ins and status updates and apply solutions wrought from conclusions (wrought from data and “social graphs”) to your News Feed. Rather than analyzing the footsteps from the fry-olator to the counter, their employees optimize database queries and computer code. From a conceptual level, this no different than figuring out how to deliver a Happy Meal a little faster — just WAY more sexy.

“Technology,” as it were, is applying knowledge to improve something else. But it’s a never-ending spectrum. Essentially, every business that sells a product with a function sells some form of technology. A 3D printer just happens to be newer to the party than a ballpoint pen. It’s just that we’re still fascinated by the Internet — this magical portal where you hit “search” and get back 234,400,000 results in .43 seconds.

We tend to think of technology companies as the ones that do the “cool.” But United Airlines or UPS sell you flights and the ability to ship your mom a new vase. To do that involves a sprawling mess of computing systems with a manual that would make the Oxford dictionary look like a VC pitch deck. Yet you’d get a funny look if you ever referred to either as a “tech” company (especially considering United’s %&$@ delays).

The next question is when it’s going to be anachronistic to call companies “Internet companies.” There was a point when the forward thinking businesses were the ones with phones. Websites are a part of a company’s operations now.

Basically, the Internet is just infrastructure.

Sure, language-wise, “Internet companies” spark the image of fooseball tables and all night coding benders. But UPS and United employ sprawling systems — tip of the iceberg being a URL — that take your money and send a package, or yourself, off to a Kuala Lumpur — in just a few clicks.

Like most businesses, the majority of Silicon Valley startups are really service companies — as uncool as that sounds. Kim’s business, noble as the objective sounds, is just a service for socialites.

Later in the show, we get a nice — albeit extremely abbreviated — inside look at a real discussion that would happen in Silicon Valley. Dwight and Chris founded a company (since sold to Facebook) called Carsabi that scours the Internet for data on cars and organizes it — a buying guide for anyone shopping for a new vehicle. Dwight asks his co-founder, Chris, when their Android app will be ready; Chris isn’t sure because he’s only started coding it that day. Dwight asks about a jQuery function — computer code used to scan a database; Chris tells him about the .find/descendant function.

These are normal engineering questions about platforms and computing. But Carsabi sells the consumer the ability to read about cars. To argue you’re buying technology when you use it is to argue that you’re using “technology” when you read Consumer Reports or flip through a phonebook. The information just gets to you in drastically different ways — but both have people improving delivery behind the scenes.